Archive for Science

Slow motion video is pretty cool. You can learn all sorts of things from it. I vividly remember as a kid not understanding why when I licked water, I would hardly get any in my mouth. I thought that dogs must not really need as much water as I thought they would. Slow motion has proven me wrong.

On the other end is time lapse. Seeing things that take too long to observe normally is amazing. I could fill the page with time lapse and slow motion videos.

It makes one think that time is more relative than it would seem. As I write this I am reminded of an article that I read somewhere that says that time is perceived differently for different creatures. It is all in our brains… zombies understand.

BrewDog, the Scottish Brewery who has twice already made the “worlds strongest beer” has now done it again. This time though, the bottles are wrapped in dead animals. Marketing gimmick or is it just a decomposable cosy? The End of History is 55% alcohol and cost about £500. Is this even still beer? At this point, what is the technical difference between beer and liquor? Well, … beer and wine are made from fermented grains, hops and water. Liquor is basically fermented things that have then been distilled. (PS. Distillation is very illegal in the United States without a permit or license)

I know that Tactical Nuclear Penguin (BrewDog’s first “world’s most alcoholic beer”) achieved its glory by freezing the beer to remove water to make it more alcoholic. Remember taking your parents vodka that was in the freezer, drinking it and adding water so they wouldn’t notice? Then it froze and they caught you … Well, water and alcohol have different freezing points. Alcohol freezes at a much lower temperature than water does. It freezes at -114 °C. Water freezes at 0°C. This means you can bring the temperature down to say, -50°C’ish and presto! Take out all the ice and you are left with nothing but some slightly watery alcohol.

Now I don’t think I would be able to easily replicate this experiment in my home but that is the basic science behind it. So the moral of the story is that next time you are in Scotland and have £500 to spare, perhaps you should (attempt to) enjoy some cold “beer” wrapped in a dead animal.

I stumbled across this post listing possible future wonders of the solar system. A lot of their really great ideas are based on current ideas in Science and Technology. Too bad I am alive now because I would really like to visit the Bio Gardens of Luna Maria…